


Strangers and Angels

by De_Nugis



Category: Supernatural, Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Gen, intoabar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-29
Updated: 2014-04-29
Packaged: 2018-01-21 06:28:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1541000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/De_Nugis/pseuds/De_Nugis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam Winchester walks into a bar and meets . . . Mark Vorkosigan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strangers and Angels

**Author's Note:**

> SPN/Vorkosiverse crossover written for the intoabar challenge. Takes place some AU time after 9.9 in Spnverse and some time between _A Civil Campaign_ and _Cryoburn_ in Vorkosiverse.
> 
> I just realized I never got around to posting this here.

“Well?” says By, “shouldn’t you go say hello to Tall, Drunk, and Handsome?”

“Why would I do that?” asks Mark. “He’s not exactly my type, Byerly.”

A curvy, blonde woman the guy at the bar is not. He certainly isn’t Kareen. Kareen is back on Beta Colony and in a week Mark will be, too. At that point his chances of running into Byerly Vorrutyer will significantly diminish. Mark can hardly wait. Though even then the probability won’t drop to zero. It never does, with By. Mark eyes him with disfavor, from his foppish Vor suit to his disconcertingly alert eyes. Fobbing By off on him isn’t the worst thing Ivan has done to Mark, but it’s close.

“Because,” says By, “you understand what he’s saying.” 

“So do you, apparently,” says Mark. Which is less surprising than it might be. By specializes in knowing unexpected things for unsavory reasons. “You go and talk to him. Buy him a drink,” not that Tall, Drunk and Shouting needs another, “take him home with you. I won’t mind. Really.” In fact, getting rid of By will vastly improve Mark’s evening. And getting rid of the stranger will vastly improve the bar. It’s a win-win situation. Perhaps some of Miles’s flair for strategy got cloned into him after all.

Byerly wags two fingers deprecatingly. “I don’t think so,” he says. “So very bulky. So very inebriated. I think I shall pass. Anyway, I _recognize_ Old Earth Standard English. I don’t _speak_ it. I expect you’re the only person in Vorbarr Sultana who does. The one man who can defuse a crisis, providentially on the scene. It's fate. We don’t want this to become violent, after all. I abhor violence in my vicinity. The excitement quite ruins me.”

By does have a point. Tall, Drunk and Handsome is tall, drunk, and muscular, and getting increasingly belligerent. He’s waving a broken bottle and the way he moves he could do damage with it. No one wants to stun a man who’s drunk out of his skull. The medical risk is too high. But if this gets out of hand, someone will take it.

Of course, By is perfectly competent for any intervening that needs doing. He can surely take down opponents well out of his weight class. Impsec, however unofficial, doesn’t skimp on its training. But Mark’s training was more . . . intensive. Not that averting a bar brawl is going to make Mark the man who saved the Imperium. Or anything other than stupid. Still, Tall, Drunk, and Over There is at least not Byerly. Regarded in that light, he has a positive charm.

Mark leaves By with the check and goes to the bar.

“Hi,” he says. Up close, Tall, Drunk and Disorderly is tall, drunk, and sweaty. He swings around, broken bottle in his hand, and peers suspiciously at Mark through a curtain of long, tangled brown hair. Not from around here. His clothes aren’t any galactic fashion Mark recognizes, either.

“What do you want?” Tall, Drunk and Out of Place asks, “Who are you? Where the fuck _is_ this place?” His accent doesn’t sound like the English-speaking subgroup in Old London, but it’s comprehensible. 

“I’m Mark,” says Mark. _Let’s leave out the Lord for now_. “And this place is in a good neighborhood where they don’t like unpleasant incidents. What seems to be the problem?” That’s how Miles starts conversations he plans to steamroll with his crazy seat-of-the-pants authority. Maybe it works even without an Auditor’s seal or the ineffable Milesness, the part that doesn’t come with the genes. 

The man puts down the bottle, with its smashed neck, on the bar. His hand is bleeding. He presses his thumb into the cut, curling in on himself. Interesting, how he can diminish himself like that. Father, Miles, they expand to fill available space. This is like the opposite. It’s almost how Gregor or Ilyan efface themselves and go quiet. But different. There’s something explosive here, something hurt. Yeah, this man is dangerous. 

“Is this real?” the man demands. He’s digging the fingers of his other hand into his bleeding palm now. “Tell me. Fucking tell me. Is this real? Am I me? Am I here?”

“You certainly seem to be,” says Mark cautiously. “Um, you probably shouldn’t do that to your hand. You’ll make the cut worse.” Mark is intimately familiar with self-inflicted damage. It’s a strategy that calls for strategy. This man’s approach seems haphazard at best. 

Hunched, Drunk, and Uncertain expands back into Tall, Drunk, and Looming. Overkill. Six feet plus around Mark is definitely overkill. Mark’s getting a crick in his neck. 

“Let’s say I believe that,” the man says, “let’s say I believe that I’m here. Then where. the fuck. is here? Russia? Did fucking Gadreel zap me to Russia? Or . . .” he trails off, staring at the console on the bar. It’s a perfectly ordinary unit, nothing fancy. Nothing to stare at. But the man fixates on it with horrified surmise.

“Um,” says Mark again. “Why don’t we sit down. You’re at Ma Kleuvi’s Tavern.” A blank look. “In Vorbarr Sultana,” Mark elaborates. Another blank look. “On Barrayar. Look, where are you from, anyway? Earth? Did you get stranded? I can probably get you to the consulate. It’s . . .” _somewhere around here._ Earth doesn’t exactly have one of the big, fancy embassies on the streets near the palace. But Mark can find it. He can find it and hand this guy over. Tall, Drunk, and Someone Else’s Problem, and then Mark can go home and call Kareen and go to bed. 

The guy is staring at him again. “I’m not on Earth,” he says flatly. He looks back at the console. “And . . . not heaven. Not hell. Not the cage. Not purgatory. And I don’t think they do sci fi tech in Oz. _Fuck._ Fuck. And you’re human and you use the Cyrillic alphabet, or a form of it. Fuck. I’m not now, am I? I’m not me, and I'm not now.”

“Can you tell me what happened to you?” Mark asks, navigating around the stranger parts of that speech. Maybe the man was kidnapped and got jumped the eight jumps from Earth in some drug-induced haze. A drug with bad side effects. That would be Miles’s sort of problem. Mark could hand Tall, Drunk, and Not From Around Here off to Miles. 

“Dean,” says the man, incomprehensibly. Mark vaguely recalls that _dean_ is some kind of academic rank. Maybe the crazy guy is a crazy professor. Galeni knows academics. Galeni. Galeni is the perfect man for this mess. He lived on Earth, in Old London, even. He was a historian. He may speak the language. Not that Galeni likes Mark much. Mark’s brilliant idea shrivels a little at the thought of calling Galeni’s Impsec comconsole. 

Tall, Drunk, and Garrulous carries right on, “Dean. My fucking brother. That's what happened to me. And an angel,” he adds, waving his bleeding hand in afterthought. “An angel happened to me, too. A goddamn angel. It was the angel dumped me in this place. Place, time, whatever. But mostly my brother. Dean happened.”

“Wait,” says Mark, “time?” _Wait, angels?_ Angels are beings from one of those Old Earth theologies, right. This man is seriously crazy. Crazier than Mark. That cheers Mark obscurely. 

“Angels,” Tall, Drunk, and Delusional confirm's Mark's thought. “They can travel in time and space, you see. Like the fucking Doctor. Only without the cool phone booth. It's not like the TARDIS. It’s smaller in here, in me, you know, not bigger. I’m smaller on the inside than on the outside. Anyway, that must be how I got here. The fucking angel Dean put in me.” 

Mark wonders what a _phone booth_ is. That Tall, Drunk, and Psychotic has a doctor somewhere, at least, is useful information. Maybe Mark can find her, or him, and give her her patient back. However alluringly familiar the combination of sibling and psychosis, this isn’t Mark's problem. He just needs to figure out whose problem it is.

“Look,” says Mark, “it’s been nice talking to you . . . what’s your name, anyway?”

“Sam,” says the guy, “Sam, uh, oh, what the fuck. Sam Winchester.”

“It’s been nice talking to you, Sam, but I think we should pay up now and go. Overtip enough and I’m sure they’ll be happy to forget all this,” Mark waves his hand in a vaguely encompassing gesture over the blood and spilled maple mead on the bar. 

“I don’t think I have any money,” says Sam, "not here, anyway." 

Tall, drunk, and broke. Figures. 

“All right,” says Mark, resigned, “I'll get this one, then.” He hands his credit chit to the bartender. A missed opportunity, there – she’d probably pay _him_ to take Tall, Drunk, and Bad News off her hands. Mark could have walked away with a profit. A modest one. Well, maybe not.

Sam stands up, swaying, and picks up his broken bottle.

“Leave that,” says Mark.

“We may need it,” says Sam. “I had an angel in me. I told you. Dean put an angel in me. If, it, we may need, I may need it. We may need to cut him out.”

Shit. “It’s all right,” says Mark. “You’re not going to need it.” Sam lets him take the bottle away, but he follows it with his eyes like it’s his last view of home from a shuttle breaking orbit.

“What do I do?” he says. 

Mark can translate that one, all right, and that’s got nothing to do with Old Earth Standard English. _Help._ Strangely enough, Mark wants to. Even more strangely, he knows how. Resources. Mark has resources.

“Come on,” he says. He tugs at Sam’s arm, and Sam follows him out the door.

“Where are we going?” Sam asks, looking around at the rain-glazed streets and the groundcars. Tall, drunk, and about to pass out, probably. Mark sighs. But it could have been worse. At least this happened here, not on Beta Colony. At least it happened at Winterfair, with the Viceroy and the Vicereine home from Sergyar. Mark has the right Someone for his Someone Else’s Problem, after all. 

Mother has some saying, about strangers and angels, doesn't she?

“I’m taking you home to Mother,” Mark says.


End file.
